Business
A weaker product that arrives late can overtake a superior pioneer if it comes with the partners and content users need. An early electronic reader with no easy, well-stocked store for books lost to a later, inferior one backed by publisher deals. Buyers choose the whole working solution, not the best part.
Before launching, draw a map of the system around your product. Name the end customer, what you will deliver, the suppliers needed to build it, and the go-betweens and complementary makers needed to bring it to users. The map shows where the system is weak before you commit to it.
A company can find a real need, build an excellent product and reach the market first, and still fail. Its success depends on other people's innovations arriving too, often ones it never planned for. Focusing hard on your own offering makes you blind to the system it needs in order to work.
When a new product needs suppliers or complementary makers to create something new as well, every one of them must succeed for the offer to work. Each extra party that has to innovate adds another chance of failure. Your own excellent work cannot make up for a missing piece.
Before end users can get the value of a new product, each go-between in the chain must decide to adopt it as well. That includes dealers, installers and people who fund or approve it. If any of them is worse off under the new arrangement, they block it, even when the end user would gain a lot.
The first mover often pays to build products the rest of the system is not ready to support. A fast follower can wait until the partners and complements are in place, then launch into a market that works. One hit music player was deliberately released years after the first rival.
Being the company that organises a whole system of partners is appealing, but it is a high-risk role. The leader carries the burden of getting everyone else aligned. Companies should not rush into this role before checking whether they can actually pull the others along.
When one party pays the cost of a change and another collects the benefit, adoption can stall for years. Adding a new player can bridge the gap, for example a firm that buys equipment and leases it to the reluctant party. A switch to digital film projection was held up for ten years until such a lease-to-own go-between appeared.